


Gorecki

by Ataraxetta



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post CA:TWS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a whole world of sap, references to past torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:44:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2317922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ataraxetta/pseuds/Ataraxetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has a crummy mission. Bucky has a crummy dream. They cuddle it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gorecki

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little fic that takes place in a bigger universe I’m writing where Bucky has a piece of the Tesseract inside him, but can be read alone. Posted this to my [Tumblr](http://ataraxetta.tumblr.com) a couple days ago but was asked to post it to AO3 so someone could bookmark it, which was super flattering so here I am. :)
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or Captain America or any of its characters/premises/settings. This is just for kicks. Title is the most romantic song in the world, by Lamb.

**Gorecki**

Steve gets home well after three in the morning, body aching, bottom lip split, covered in slime and really goddamn tired of aliens. The dimmed living room lights brighten as soon as he steps out of the elevator, and Tony’s AI greets him pleasantly. "Good evening, Captain Rogers."

"Hi, Jarvis," Steve says. He sets his shield down and leans his shoulder against the wall in the entryway to brace himself so he can try and peel off his boots, but his hands are too slippery and the sodden leather is all but adhered to his socks and trousers. He drops his foot and lets out a resigned sigh, tipping his head to rest his temple against the wall.

On top of its truly foul stench, the slime is apparently fatigue inducing and powerful enough that it’d knocked Clint and Natasha out cold the moment it touched them and had nearly taken even Steve and Thor to their knees. Tony, who had been protected by his suit, and Bruce, who hadn’t been affected at all, did most of the work, but the Beyoon Bax’s lightning fast speed had been an unforeseen pain in ass and they’d all taken a bit of a beating before they managed to contain the bastards.

Steve lets his aching shoulders sag and gives in to an overpowering yawn, his eyelids drooping. He could happily fall asleep right there on his feet, but Jarvis speaks up again. "Sir, I’ve taken the liberty of starting your shower."

Rather pointed, for a computer. Steve blinks blearily across the oversized living room and past the oversized kitchen to the hallway and the master bedroom and his bathroom beyond it, which seems an insurmountable distance at the moment. There’s absolutely no reason for an apartment this big to even exist. "Shower’s far," he slurs.

"You have walked much further, Sir."

Steve feels himself grin. "That was very motivational, Jarvis."

"Just offering a bit of perspective," says Jarvis. Steve pushes himself off the wall with a tired groan and picks up his shield again. He cards his slimy fingers through his slimy hair and sluggishly starts the trek, wincing at the gross squish of each step he takes across hardwood that probably cost more than Steve’s life is worth. When he makes it to the bedroom door, feet dragging, Jarvis adds a rather dry, "Well done, Captain."

"Thanks," Steve deadpans.

"Certainly. If you’ll deposit your clothes into the box in the elevator once you’ve changed, they’ll be taken care of for you."

Steve lifts an eyebrow. "By 'taken care of’—"

"They will be incinerated and you will be provided a new uniform. Under the circumstances, Mr. Stark has found it to be the best solution."

Steve’s uniform isn’t the Iron Man suit, but it’s not exactly something he picked up off the rack at Macy’s, either, and he normally would balk at the idea of having a new one engineered just because the old one got a little dirty, but he’s pretty sure nothing but an incinerator could handle this stench. "I think he’s probably right," he says. "Is Bucky asleep?"

"No, Sir. Mr. Barnes has been awake for twenty-one minutes. I’ve informed him of your arrival."

Damn it. "Thanks, Jarvis. Sounds like I’m all taken care of. Good work out there tonight."

"Thank you, Sir. Sleep well."

Steve opens the bedroom door as quietly as possible anyway, momentarily taken aback by the unexpected chill of a breeze. The glass doors that open onto the balcony are partially open and the rumpled bed is empty. Steve turns on the light and approaches the bed with heavy, wet footsteps, gaze flickering around the room and the concerned knot in his chest easing a little. Nothing is broken or out of place and Bucky’s phone and knife are still on the bedside table, both good signs.

The urge to check on him itches under Steve’s skin, but Bucky knows that Steve’s home and he hasn’t come inside, and if he’d felt so trapped that he was willing to go sit outside in forty degree weather, it’s likely that he needs some space to wind down on his own first. Steve doesn’t want to intrude. Not yet, anyway.

He gives Bucky another forty minutes of privacy while he showers, dumps his ruined uniform in the elevator and rids the apartment of the alien sludge he trailed in. Then he turns off the lights in the main room and retreats back to the bedroom, pulling the comforter off the bed to take with him outside.

Bucky’s curled up cat-like in an oversized chaise lounge, wearing a thin zip-up hoodie over his tank top, a pair of plain black pajama pants and blue socks with fat bumble bees printed on them. He looks over with a faint, sincere smile when Steve steps outside and Steve’s whole world tips on its axis the same way it always does when Bucky’s attention is on him. He smiles back helplessly, letting the glass door close behind him, and closes the distance between them in a few long strides.

"Stargazing?" he asks.

Bucky blinks demurely up at him, frowning when he catches sight of the split in Steve’s lip and lifting a hand toward Steve’s face. Steve drops to a squat to accommodate him, searches Bucky’s face for signs that he’s been crying or gnawing on his lips the way he’s prone to when he’s unsettled, but there’s nothing. Beyond the unnatural glow behind his eyes of the Tesseract inside him, there’s no evidence of whatever’s driven him out of bed. Bucky grazes his fingers over Steve’s bruised cheek, warm against Steve’s skin. Bucky’s temperature regulated arm is probably the only part of him that isn’t miserably cold.

"Hurt," Bucky murmurs, thumbing very gently over Steve’s busted lip. Steve quirks a smile and ducks his chin a little to press a kiss to the center of Bucky’s palm.

"Tired, mostly," he admits.

Bucky hums, drawing his hand back, and after a long few moments where Steve doesn’t do anything but look at Bucky with unbearable fondness, rolls his eyes and snags the comforter still balled up in Steve’s arms. "I want this."

"All yours," Steve agrees, standing up and stretching. He’s going to take a seat in the cushy chair on Bucky’s other side, but Bucky pushes himself off the back of his lounge and shuffles up a few feet, and Steve gratefully slides into the space behind him instead. He straddles the chaise while Bucky unbundles the comforter, slides his broad hands up Bucky’s’ back on either side of his spine, digging the heels in a little where the muscle is knotted and stiff. He noses a few strands of hair that’ve fallen loose from Bucky’s messy ponytail out of the way so he can press his lips to the side of Bucky’s neck.

"Heya," Steve murmurs, hiding his grin against Bucky’s skin.

Bucky snorts. "Heya."

He shakes the comforter out and once he has it spread over his lap, Steve pulls his legs up to rest on either side of Bucky’s, tucking his bare feet under Bucky’s socked ones. He relaxes into the plush cushion at his back, reaching for Bucky’s hips to pull him close, but Bucky’s too busy shrugging out of his hoodie. Steve frowns.

"Buck, hey, what’re you doin’? You’re freezing."

"Skin," Bucky answers. He doesn’t elaborate but the look he gives Steve as he drops his hoodie carelessly onto the ground gets the point across, and Steve laughs breathily and sits up enough to get rid of his own t-shirt while Bucky sheds his tank top. It’s _cold_ , and Bucky’s skin is like ice when he finally rests back against Steve’s chest, but once they’re cocooned in the comforter from the shoulders down it’s surprisingly comfortable, the breeze ruffling their hair and reddening the tips of their noses a nice balance to their body heat. Steve touches a kiss to Bucky’s temple.

"How was Barcelona?" Bucky asks. "And the Bon Bons?"

"Beyoon Bax," Steve corrects.

"Tch," Bucky says. "Mine’s better."

His voice is a warm drawl, but his hand is fidgeting restlessly over the arm Steve has looped around his waist and there’s something deliberate in the way he’s holding himself in his loose sprawl.

Bucky had always been tactile, thrived on touching and being touched. Steve’d noticed, of course, because he was more often than not the subject of all of Bucky’s exuberant attention, especially once they became lovers, but he hadn’t really understood what a vital part of Bucky it was until the war, when Dr. Zola twisted it into something ugly and awful that Bucky hated just as much as he craved, unable to bear even casual intimacy but equally unable to bear the lack of it. One of the last memories Steve has of Bucky before he fell from the train is of kneeling mostly naked in the middle of a destroyed London hotel room, Bucky bloody-knuckled and frustrated and trembling with tears on his cheeks, muffling furious, anguished screams into Steve’s shoulder.

The Winter Soldier hadn’t known to care one way or another, and now, Bucky’s probably more sensation oriented than he’s ever been. Steve’s spent an entire war and the last three years learning by trial and error how to interpret Bucky’s walking wounded body language. The tremor in Bucky’s limbs and the nearly imperceptible tension now is more uncertain than defensive, will be easier to coax him out of. Steve slides his hand underneath the waistband of Bucky’s pajamas to palm over a splash of scar tissue on his pelvis and strokes his fingers up and down Bucky’s other side as he fills him in on the mission in Spain. By the time he’s finished, Bucky’s at least stopped compulsively tugging at the hair on Steve’s arm.

"Not exactly our most dignified moment, but no civilian casualties. Could’ve been worse," Steve says. Could’ve been better, too. If he’d made it to Black Widow and Hawkeye in time, if he’d managed to find a weakness without having to blow an entire shipyard, if half his team hadn’t still been recovering from an ugly mission last week, if he’d just…

Dwelling on it isn’t going to change anything. It’s over, everyone is alive, a victory by any other name. Something in his voice must give him away though, because Bucky curls his fingers around Steve’s wrist and gives it a comforting squeeze.

"Your glass is lookin’ a little half-empty there, cowboy," Bucky says.

Steve shrugs, trying to find the right words to explain. "Nat and Clint are spending the night in medical. Always feel a little like I’ve failed when one of you gets hurt, y’know?"

Bucky squeezes his wrist again. "Hey, now, don’t go so easy on yourself. This was two that got hurt, not just one."

Steve barks out a surprised laugh and pinches him, catches only the corner of Bucky’s responding smile. "Asshole. I know it’s stupid."

Bucky turns in Steve’s arms. His lips graze over the hinge of Steve’s jaw and then the flutter of his pulse point and he settles on his side, forehead to Steve’s cheek and breath warm on Steve’s neck. Steve draws his knees up a little to bracket him in. "You’re not stupid," Bucky says ("I never said I was stupid," Steve mutters). He pats Steve’s cheek with the hand not caught between them. "Just wrong."

Steve momentarily flashes back to hours and weeks and months of therapy, of _you’re not responsible for anyone’s feelings but your own_ and _there are no right or wrong emotions_. He digs his fingers into Bucky’s side and grins when Bucky gasps, ticklish as hell the way he’s always been.

"Asshole," Steve repeats. The chaise is more comfortable than he’s ever given it credit for, and it’s getting hard to keep his eyes open, exhaustion amped up even more now that he’s still and warm and has Bucky in his arms. He yawns loudly, jaw popping from the stretch and Bucky huffs a quiet laugh and squeezes Steve’s hip.

"We should go inside. Let you sleep off the slime."

It’s nice of him to offer but Steve’s pretty sure Bucky’s claustrophobia hasn’t eased any, so he doesn’t bother to reply. Instead he drags his hand up the long line of Bucky’s spine to massage the base of his neck, and then tugs his hair tie loose and smoothes out the dark strands where they’ve tangled, threads his fingers through them and cradles the back of Bucky’s head in his palm. Bucky mumbles grumpily, but the tension drains out of him a little more with every touch. An ugly part of Steve loves these moments, when what Bucky needs most is to be touched. All Steve ever wants is to be sweet to him and it’s so rarely that Bucky allows it.

Steve wets his lips over a fond smile, turns his face as Bucky tilts his chin up and catches Bucky’s mouth with his own. He cups the curve of Bucky’s shoulder with his free hand, veiny scar tissue unnaturally smooth under his palm, and as Bucky’s tongue gently flicks over the split in Steve’s lip Steve strokes down Bucky’s arm until he can tangle their fingers together. He touches his lips to Bucky’s cheek and the bridge of his nose and his forehead, and Bucky lets out a shuddering breath and squeezes his hand.

"What’d you dream?" Steve asks. Their faces are too close for Steve to be able to see Bucky’s eyes but he’s learned to read him a thousand different ways, can interpret through touch alone if he needs to.

"I dunno," Bucky answers, which may or may not be true but isn’t important enough to press. Steve’s got no right to Bucky’s nightmares. "Woke up shaking. Bad taste in my mouth."

Steve frowns. "Adrenaline?"

Bucky’s brow furrows against Steve’s, and it seems to take him a while to find his voice. When he does it’s so quiet it’s nearly lost under the wind, paper thin and insubstantial. "Electricity," he says. Steve’s hand pauses where he's stroking Bucky’s hair and Bucky clears his throat. "That’s what it tasted like, I mean. Electricity tastes like that. Gasoline. Metal. And lime, sometimes."

Steve swallows hard and turns his head to look at the sky again so Bucky won’t see the bitter, humorless smile that stretches across his face. Electricity tastes like that. Being torn apart tastes like that. Brain damage tastes like that. Torture tastes like that. Steve’s not sure if it’s healthy that even after a few years he can’t be reminded of anything Bucky’s suffered through without wanting to tear the entire world down with his bare hands. Or what kind of person it’d mean he’d become if a day ever comes when he doesn’t.

He cups Bucky’s cheek and leans into it when Bucky kisses him, plush of Bucky’s lips a warm give against his own, and lets the useless anger go. Bucky makes a quiet, achy sound that Steve’s learned is a good one and presses his tongue into Steve’s mouth. It’s so late, and Steve’s so tired and it feels so good, Bucky’s weight above him and the thorough, cautious way he kisses like the privilege might be taken away at any time. When it breaks, Steve draws Bucky into another, and another, chaste, quiet touches of their lips before he lets out a satisfied sigh, grips the back of Bucky’s neck and knocks their foreheads together gently.

"Electricity, huh?" he murmurs. "Good thing we tend to stay away from anything high voltage, right?"

Bucky groans, a long-suffering expression on his face. He’s never appreciated the fact that Steve is actually hilarious. "Shit."

"Hey." Steve tugs gently on his hair, smiling smugly. "Hey, c’mon. Because Thor lives upstairs."

"I got it, Steve."

"It was pretty good."

"Wasn’t," says Bucky.

"Was," Steve insists. He skitters his hands down Bucky’s sides and digs his fingers into his ribs again, laughs at Bucky’s indignant cry and wraps both legs around him when he tries to squirm away, swearing and laughing all at once. The chaise isn’t big enough for much of a tussle and Bucky’s got Steve’s arms pinned in seconds, but Steve doesn’t put up much of a fight; Bucky’s laughter is all he was after. He flexes his wrists in Bucky’s hands and grins up at him, wiggling his eyebrows pointedly. "I’m really funny."

"You’re not," Bucky says. "You’re really dumb."

"Thor would’ve laughed."

Bucky snorts and lets him go and Steve keeps both his arms out of the way as Bucky shifts around again, wriggles his right arm into the gap between the small of Steve’s back and the back of the chaise and slides his hand under the waistband of Steve’s pajamas to curl around his hip, skin-to-skin. "Thor laughs at everything."

"Only funny things," Steve assures. He lets his heavy eyelids drift closed and settles his arms back around Bucky, who tucks his head into the crook of Steve’s neck and brushes his thumb over the curve of Steve’s hip when Steve gives into another yawn.

"Should go inside," he says again. "It’s fuckin’ cold out here."

An army couldn’t move Steve right now. He’s never been more comfortable in his life. "'m good," he mumbles sleepily, patting Bucky vaguely on the back. "Warm enough with you."

Bucky mutters something—Steve definitely catches the word 'stubborn’ at least once—but tightens the comforter around them all the same. Steve drifts, matches his breathing to Bucky’s, lets the world go fuzzy around the edges. Just as he’s on the cusp of sleep Bucky cards his fingers through the shorter hair just above Steve’s ear and presses a warm kiss to the side of his neck. "Ты - мой любимый."

Steve couldn’t have fought the grin if he tried. "а ты мой."

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Since the translation sounds really saptastic in English I wanted to add ziusik's commentary (she is conveniently Russian and has helped me out a ton I love you lady!)
> 
>  **ziusik:** OKAY!! :D SO: “dorogoy” means, literally, “dear one” - that one’s used a lot by couples  
>  My favorite is actually “milyi” (MEE-lyi) which is a really lovely way of saying “darling” (as an adjective, but it works as a noun, as well). There is also, “liubimy” - which is beloved; sounds less antiquated in Russian.  
>  **ataraxetta:** milyi is sweet. what would the sentence be?  
>  **ziusik:** It’s REALLY sweet; like, I love it a lot  
>  **ataraxetta:** like any sentence that would use it  
>  **ziusik:** Let’s see it… “Ty moy milyi” is “you’re my darling.” I SWOON, tbh  
>  **ataraxetta:** UGH I love it
> 
> And then she translated it for me. So Bucky says: “you’re my darling” and Steve replies with “and you’re mine.” :)


End file.
